


Catch the Lightning

by Avia_Isadora



Series: Jauffre Trevelyan [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Circle Mages, Circle of Magi Culture and Customs, Coming of Age, Gen, Mages, Mages (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21862633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avia_Isadora/pseuds/Avia_Isadora
Summary: In 9.02 Dragon, nine year old Jauffre Trevelyan made his first and only voyage to Rivain on his father's merchant ship.  What happened then changed his life and the future of Thedas, because thirty-nine years from then he would be the only survivor of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, the Herald of Andraste.  But his story began long before the Conclave, on a ship out of Ostwick....
Series: Jauffre Trevelyan [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1599952
Kudos: 2





	Catch the Lightning

**Author's Note:**

> This is a different universe from my Elleth Lavellan stories, in which there is a different Inquisitor.

When he was nine years old, in the year 9.02 Dragon, Jauffre Trevelyan sailed on a Marcher merchant ship to Rivain. It was a wallowing, clumsy carrack that only made good time before the wind. His father was the captain, a cousin of Bann Trevelyan who was part-owner, and Jauffre was the oldest child and only boy. Someday the Gallant Evelyn would be his, if he or the ship lasted so long.

He saw the spires of Rivain under a turquoise sky, felt the hot winds that blew from land at night to cool the heat of the day, exalted in the strange crowds that filled the merchant’s quarter – Tevinter and Qunari alike shopping for wares. They thought his sober woolen hose and cap as strange as he found their clothes. 

“Have you been here before, Papa?” he asked excitedly.

“Oh yes,” his father said, one hand on his shoulder. “Once a year or so. You’ll come with me now. It’s time to learn the trade.”

“Really?” Jauffre could think of nothing better than to travel the world like this, seeing everything in it. 

“Really,” his father said.

They were almost home when a storm came up. Clouds piled up like enormous mounds of feathers on the horizon and Gallant Evelyn ran before it. Jauffre felt the wind tugging at him, the ship leaping through the growing swells, while behind the light died and a purple twilight loomed, broken by cracks of lightning. There was no rain yet. It fell in sheets behind. And still Gallant Evelyn ran before it, his father at the wheel, all sails spread to the wind. Perhaps they could outrun it. Perhaps they still could.

The pall of cloud spread over them. The wind freshened. The sailors shouted to one another. 

“Jauffre, go below!” his father yelled, but Jauffre hesitated. The clouds roiled. His hair suddenly stood on end.

Half a moment. He felt it coming, every inch of his skin crawling with it. The sky split. The bolt lanced downward, a strike for the mainmast that would cleave it in two, dismasting ship and leaving it at the mercy of the sea trailing canvas and wood and rope and charred bodies.

“No!” Jauffre screamed, throwing his hands up as though a little boy’s hands could ward off lightning.

And he caught it. It touched and bounced off, discharging harmlessly into the sky, leaping from his palms like water dashing down rocks. The force of it threw him to the deck, momentarily blind from the flash, spots dancing before his eyes.

Someone must have taken the wheel. His father was at his side, agony in his voice. “Jauffre! Jauffre, can you hear me?”

“I’m fine,” Jauffre said. His voice was shaky, but already the spots were stopping. There was a sudden burst of cold water, the leading edge of the rain catching up with them. He clutched his father’s sleeve.

“You’re not dead.”

Jauffre blinked. He could see now, the ship and the sheets of rain, his father’s face running with water like tears. “I’m not hurt.” He could move. He could stand.

“Let me see your hands.” 

He turned them over. There was not a mark on them.

The wind was less now that the rain had begun, the storm front racing on ahead. His father touched his palms incredulously.

“I feel fine,” Jauffre said. It was dawning on him that there was only one way he could have done that, a way that would mean he’d never see Rivain again. His first voyage was his last. 

They took him to the Circle at Westfall, not thirty miles away inland, a Tower that had a good reputation. His mother and his sisters cried. His father didn’t until it was time to say farewell, to leave him with strangers in this gloomy building that he would never leave without permission, not all his life. Mages were dangerous. Mages were one step from possession by demons. They had to be in permanent wardship, under the guardianship of Templars, to prevent tragedy. There was no outgrowing it. There was no leaving, unless he was needed somewhere and the Templars ordered to take him. 

The First Enchanter was an old woman his grandmother’s age and she explained that the first night. She was very nice. She explained that there were only two other apprentices, both of them older than he was, and six mages. It was a very quiet circle in a very quiet town. Nothing much happened usually, except the need for healing of chest sickness in the winter months and when someone had an accident. Also there were routine things like making potions and touching arrows so they’d fly true, things townsfolk paid the Circle for. A year might go by without anything more dangerous, she said happily.

The Templars were old too, at least to Jauffre’s mind. The Knight-Commander was forty and forgetful, prone to palsy and sleeping into the morning. His second was fond of bear hunting. There were only six of them too. The youngest two spent their time flirting with Eliana, the youngest of the mages, and planning ways to impress her with ribbons or highly creative swordplay.

The other two apprentices were fourteen and fifteen, both girls and best friends. They were kind in a condescending way, but not actually eager to be friends with a nine year old boy. Any day now they’d face their Harrowing and would probably be transferred somewhere much more exciting than Westfall.

There were studies, of course. He’d already learned to read and write, as a merchant’s son should, and he could do sums in a ledger, but a great deal more than that was expected of a mage. The First Enchanter was strict about lessons – history, mathematics, and above all the Chant of Light – but after lessons he could use the Circle library as he wished. There were books about Rivain. There were histories of Tevinter. He learned with a shock that once all the lands he’d known had been part of Tevinter before Blessed Andraste rose up and freed them. It was a good thing for everyone who lived there now, but it was why the Tevenes had burned her at the stake, not because they hated the Chant of Light. They hated losing provinces. “Andraste,” the First Enchanter whispered as though it was a secret though no one else was in the room, “was a mage and a prophet as well as the Maker’s True Bride. She had an army and she could call lightning from the sky and smite the pride of the Tevinter Magisters where they stood.”

“And so she made them give up all the people they conquered,” Jauffre said. It made him feel warm inside, like maybe he was just a little bit like Andraste. 

“That she did,” the First Enchanter said. “And they feared her and we loved her, so they killed her and we sing chants in her honor to this day.”

He asked the thing he’d been wondering since he arrived. “So why do they keep us locked up?”

The First Enchanter gave him her watery smile. “Why do you think?”

Jauffre frowned. “Because they fear us and need us too?”

She put her hand over his. “And that is the key to understanding how everyone will see you from this day on, Jauffre. Remember that they fear you no matter how much they need you. Manage their fear and you control them.”

He frowned. “You mean we can control the Templars?”

“Through diplomacy, not magic,” she said. “You will learn. And the lessons are just as exacting as how to draw lightning.”

Jauffre liked his lessons and he liked the First Enchanter. But at night, when the wind blew round the old tower and his little room that he had all to himself, he pretended he was on a ship at sea and he cried, not so much because his lot was terrible but for all the things he’d never do and never see. There was so much world that was forever lost.

Jauffre had always been an active child, and now there was nothing to do but study and eat, so there was rather too much of the latter. Mages didn’t ride and mages didn’t play rowdy games and anyway who would he play them with? By winter’s end his clothes were too small and not just in length. The older apprentices were sympathetic in a patronizing way. “Poor little boy still cries for his mother,” he heard one of them say on the steps in the morning. “And he’s going to be perfectly round if he keeps up eating like that.”

“Well, why not?” the other said. “It’s not as though he’s supposed to lead an army, is he?”

A shiver ran through him. It would be amazing to lead an army. He imagined riding in white beside Blessed Andraste, shooting lightning from his fingertips which would destroy anyone who tried to hurt her, though in his imaginings Blessed Andraste was less gentle and more martial than the serene statue in the Chantry. Or maybe Blessed Andraste stood behind and her champions went to the fore, one in black and one in white, one with a bloody sword and one with flame dancing in his hands. 

Spring had come when the Knight-Commander called for him, a singular event indeed. Jauffre came panting down the steps as fast as he could, then stopped on the bottom step and stared. Talking to the Knight-Commander was his father!

Jauffre flew across the room and into his father’s arms. Suddenly he was crying and his father was holding him tight, squeezing him and saying how he’d grown and that his mother wanted him to know how much he was loved.

“I’ll just be in my office then,” the Knight-Commander said vaguely, and wandered off in the direction of the kitchen.

“How did you get here?” Jauffre demanded when he could breathe again. “Papa, it’s forbidden! Mage apprentices aren’t allowed to see their families. Ever!”

“I came back from a voyage to Antiva with some very nice Antivan coffee,” his father said smugly. “An ideal gift for an over-worked Knight-Commander, don’t you think?”

“You bribed him?” Jauffre boggled.

“Not at all,” Papa said with a wink. “I stopped by to express my gratitude for the good care he takes of my son and brought a small gift. It was his idea that of course I could visit with you while I was here. And incidentally give you some small things I’ve brought, like more socks your sisters made and a number of letters.”

“You bribed him.” Jauffre shook his head, smiling. Templars were supposed to be incorruptible. Apparently coffee was all it took.

His father knelt down so their eyes were on a level. “Listen, Jauffre. There are many people in the world who have less than we, less money and less wit and less influence in the world. And so we have the power to do things that matter, like see our children when they’re in a Circle. Everyone should. Nobody should say farewell to their son forever. But each time somebody breaks the rule, it gets weaker and weaker.”

“So you’re saying if there’s a bad rule I should break it?”

“I’m saying that rules are rigid things. When enough people bend them, they break on their own and then nobody follows them. You’re a mage, and that means you’re going to have power. And that means you’re going to have to be your own judge of what’s right. Is it wrong for me to want to see you?”

“Of course not.”

“And is it wrong for the Knight-Commander to like Antivan coffee?”

“Well, no.”

“So if I give him what he wants, and he gives me what I want, and no harm is done to anyone?”

“Then I guess it’s alright,” Jauffre said. He pursed his lips, and then he said the thing he’d been thinking, the thing he hadn’t said to the First Enchanter. “I don’t think mages belong in circles at all. And I don’t think they always used to stay in circles.”

“They don’t right now in Tevinter or Rivain,” his father said. “Or among the Dalish.”

Jauffre boggled. “The Dalish elves don’t have Circles?”

His father shook his head. “Not a bit. And not fifty miles from here. If you were an elvhen lad, you’d be with your own folk. It’s just us, good Andrasteans that we are, that keep our mages in Circles.”

Jauffre’s voice held a new note of maturity. “Papa, what you’re saying is awfully close to heresy.”

His father winked. “Might be, mightn’t it?” He stood up, inviting Jauffre to walk with him. “Keep your wits about you, son. Things go up and down, nobles and prelates and clerics alike. Today’s doctrine is tomorrow’s heresy and the other way around. Orlais and the Marches and Ferelden and Navarra and even Tevinter – it’s a dance. The figures change, and sometimes fate takes a hand of its own. But it might come in handy, being able to catch the lightning.”

“It might indeed,” Jauffre said gravely.


End file.
